


i owe a battle

by quadrille



Category: American Gods (TV)
Genre: Car Accidents, During Canon, F/M, Gen, Guilt, Pre-Canon, Season/Series 01, Stakeout
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-12 01:19:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18001070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quadrille/pseuds/quadrille
Summary: Mostly, he drinks his SoCo and Coke, slow and thoughtful, watching the small dark-haired croupier on the other side of the room.





	i owe a battle

**Author's Note:**

> Ever since I heard the theory that Sweeney had been tasked to follow and monitor Laura for a while before her death, I couldn't get it out of my head and had to write a small thing for it.

He’s all of six-foot-six, with flaming red hair.

It’s hard to slip under the radar like that. Mad Sweeney’s never been particularly good at subtlety or the delicate touch, and he’s even more conspicuous besides: loud voice, Irish accent, often drunk, with wildly gesticulating hands and a cigarette crammed in the corner of his mouth.

But for this task assigned by Grimnir, he can, sometimes, _occasionally_ , behave. There’s a baseball cap jammed low on his head, obscuring his face and hair, and he’s dressed in shapeless clothing; he slouches more, slumps down in his seat, and lets himself fade into the background alongside all the other men at the casino, pouring their money and hopes and dreams down the drain. They’re exhausted wispy shades of themselves, measuring out drinks and cocaine and extra poker chips. If Gambling happens to be one of the new gods, he supposes she is very rich. 

The lucky coin helps; Sweeney keeps absentmindedly playing with it in his pocket, running a thumb along its familiar ancient grooves and the shape of its face. He doesn’t actually gamble much when he’s staking out the Anubis Casino, because he’d win too much and too often with it in his pocket.

Mostly, he drinks his SoCo and Coke, slow and thoughtful, watching the small dark-haired croupier on the other side of the room.

  


* * *

  


He haunts her at the grocery store, wandering through the buzzing white lights and scuffed tiles while she shops. Laura does the groceries. What is a woman like this doing with the fucking _groceries_?

Right when it seems like she might catch him, noticing the fact that this oversized ginger has been tailing her from work to errands and back again— then another customer accidentally drops a gallon of milk which smashes open on the floor, spilling everywhere and all over their shoes, which lets Sweeney slip away unnoticed.

Thank you, coin.

  


* * *

  


The married couple is at a backyard barbecue, which he’s watching with an actual honest-to-fuck pair of binoculars pressed to his eyes. The wholesome lad is happy here in this plain and domestic setting. But she isn’t. It’s so painfully apparent and plain as day to Sweeney watching that he’s amazed no one else actually notices. They’re probably too close to it. To her quiet misery, the dissatisfied curl at the corner of her mouth, the too-tight smiles and boredom in her eyes glazing over.

Laura’s going to be the necessary lever to push Shadow into the casino robbery.

Then they’ll need it to go wrong.

Mad Sweeney sets down the binoculars and takes another sip from his lukewarm beer, the remains of a six-pack rolling around at his feet. He does Grimnir’s dirty work, as always.

  


* * *

  


It’s not every day a stakeout leads to a murder.

He’s standing on a darkened road, with the smell of gasoline and hot metal and burnt rubber. Broken glass snaps under his boots as he walks ahead, standing over a shattered corpse scorched from roadburn, her flesh peeled back. Her teeth had snapped shut. Like a broken doll.

He did this.

Sweeney can hear the click-clack of the ravens’ beaks behind him, and it sounds like laughter.

“Fucking happy now?” he asks the sky — he’s certain Grimnir is listening, or eavesdropping through these birds anyway — and the leprechaun bites down on the bitterness, vile on his tongue.

“Tell him. Tell him it's done. “

  


* * *

  


Weeks later, he’s sharing a motel room with the woman he killed.

Laura is unselfconscious about her body, thin and spare and pale. When she changes shirts — briskly, brusquely — he can see the jagged autopsy scars and livid raw stitching where they sewed her back up. Big, ugly thread because she wasn’t ever supposed to be seen naked again.

Each stitch is a reminder of what he’s done.

But Laura hasn’t lost any of her bite or attitude. If anything, those years of pent-up dissatisfaction have finally been unleashed, and it’s oddly gratifying to find it redirected at him; to be able to feel some of that fury, that sting, because he deserves it, he knows he fucking deserves it.

  


* * *

  


And then for a second time, he’s standing in a rubber-scorched road with Laura Moon’s corpse at his feet. Sweeney’s voice raw in his throat, furious: _Haven't I believed enough in your bullshit? Haven't I suffered enough?_

_Isn't that enough itself?_

This time, he can’t fucking do it. So he picks up the coin from where it’s fallen — still strangely warm, as if it’s only just left his pocket — and he presses it into her chest, thumb sinking between broken ribs, until it dissolves into her flesh. His fingers brushing against her bare skin, with an almost tender touch.

And then her fist collides with his nose and he hears-slash-feels the crunch of broken bone and he tumbles backwards. Bright, glorious pain lighting up his whole face.

He still owes Grimnir a battle.

Good thing every day with this woman is a gods-damned battle.


End file.
